Today, thanks to online applications, all social media users now have the opportunity to stand out and in turn become leaders in respect to their interests. As a result, marketers and public relation professionals are forced to reassess their approach to define the notion influence on social networks.

Today, social media is enabling everybody to increase the visibility of their views on topics they care about. This can foster dialogue, but does not automatically turn anyone into a subject matter expert or even a thought leader as such. Still, if you are, you will get found and your reach and impact will increase, thanks to the connected globa nature of social media.

This graphic provides a good categorization of different degrees of influence you may acquire thanks to your use of social media. Where would you place yourself on it? Where do you want to be?

From super-effective search tricks to Google tools specifically for education to tricks and tips for using Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar, these tricks will surely save you some precious time.

Robin Good: Few people today are aware of how much scientific knowledge is being restricted and not made accessible to everyone, thanks to existing business model and the exorbitant subscription prices that scientific journals and magazines charge to their subscribers.

Since such journals are the key medium through which scientists can get their work published and distributed widely, the least accessible are these journals, the greater the amount of people who will not be able to read what such research documents contain.

Nick Shockey and Jonathan Eisen provide an in-depth explanation of why "open access" in the case of scientific papers is so critical for our future.

"Inquiry-based learning is founded on students taking the lead in their own learning, but it still requires considerable planning on your part [as teacher, guide, learning architect]. Projects must fit into your larger program structure, goals and plans, but the students will be actively involved in planning the projects with you and asking the questions that launch their individual inquiries."

Collaborative learning encompasses a wide variety of learning activities. These learning activities can include collaborative writing, group projects, joint problem solving, debates, and study teams. As I see it any form of ...

I use mindmaps with my students so they can literally see the information they read in the texts in a visual, connected, lateral form. "In a lab in Sussex a group of people have had their brainwaves scanned while completing a series of tasks, individually and in groups, to see if data visualisation - presenting information visually, in this case a series of mind maps - can help.

The results showed that when tasks were presented visually rather than using traditional text-based software applications, individuals used around 20% less cognitive resources. In other words, their brains were working a lot less hard.

As a result, they performed more efficiently, and could remember more of the information when asked later. Working in groups, they used 10% less mental resources."

"The literacy of the future rests on the ability to decode and construct meaning from one's constantly evolving environment -- whether it's coded orally, in text, images, simulations, or the biosphere itself. Therefore we must be adaptive to our social, economic and political landscape. Those of us living in this digital age are required to learn, unlearn and learn again and again."

Do you know what technology you’ll be using in the classroom 5 years from now? What about 10 years from now? A new visualization may be able to help.

Thanks to the hard work by Envisioning Tech, it’s simple to see what we could expect to happen in the next few decades. From today’s iPads to holograms in the year 2040, there’s a lot coming to a classroom near you.

The Real TsunamiInside Higher EdCarnegie Mellon is offering its Open Learning Initiative (OLI) to the public. But all of these efforts are not the tsunami. Open online learning is merely a tool that adds variety to how education is delivered.

When you woke up this morning, did you notice gravity at all? You probably didn’t consciously feel or sense gravity at all. Yet, it’s a force that is applied to our bodies all day, every day.

When you walk past an office and see people talking or hear people laughing in the hallway, do you think about social learning – probably not? If something is always present, you don’t think about it much until it has changed. Every interaction we have doesn’t mean we are learning socially but if you look around you might be surprised how often it is happening.

This looks like an excellent guide to open educational resources for newcomers to the field, and it also contains very useful, detailed information for old hands, such as the appendices giving an overview of OER repositories and search engines around the world. Very clearly written and covers all the essential information about Creative Commons licences, how and where to find OERs, how to publish OERs, as well as a section on making the case for OERs. Great work by author Neil Butcher and editors Asha Kanwar (Commonwealth of Learning) and Stamenka Uvalic´-Trumbic´ (UNESCO).
Via Gabi Witthaus

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